


No Other Gods Before Me

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Espionage, Established Relationship, Headcanon, M/M, Open Relationships, Pre-Series, Relationship(s), Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Sparring, Undercover, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:44:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3166949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn is hired to eliminate Damien Moreau.  First he had to get past Damien's enforcer, and an attraction neither man expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Other Gods Before Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarlingGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/gifts).



> Okay, starlinggirl, I swear I was trying for get-together fic! Unfortunately with Damien in the picture it just wasn't going to work out for the boys. I hope you enjoy your gift anyway, and thanks for playing with us!

“Is that a new one?” Damien Moreau asked, leaning on his sun bronzed forearms. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled artfully to the elbows, and the top three buttons were undone – showing just enough of his well-formed chest that he commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

Eliot didn’t even bother to look up from his paperwork. “Jonah Quinn,” he said. “You wanted me to hire on some new people after things went south with those traffickers in Nairobi. He’s been working as a merc in South Africa, but aside from that one lapse in judgment he checked out.”

Damien made an appreciative noise, and went back to watching his latest acquisition put bullet after bullet in the dead center of his target. Eliot could tell by sound that the majority of the men supposed to be practicing right now were watching Quinn as well. He knew he needed to say something, but Moreau wasn’t annoyed by the slip in discipline, and he’d been trying to finish charting these figures for Damien for two days now.

“I want to see you two together,” Moreau said a few moments later. Eliot paused long enough to put the finishing touches on his calculations, then gave Damien his full attention.

“Thought you might. Background check indicates he’d be open to a proposal.”

After so many years, Eliot could read his employer like the proverbial book. He watched as Damien looked down at Quinn, and then back at him – imagining what the two of them would look like together. “You want a public spectacle, or a private show?”

Damien looked between them again, carefully considering his options. “Vet him privately, then make the offer.”

That settled, Eliot got to his feet and joined Damien at the railing. After his performance, Chapman and the others on the range were giving Quinn a wide berth. _They know how this game is played,_ Eliot thought, watching their newest acquisition as he tended his weapons. In addition to being the most powerful man in the European underworld, Damien Moreau was a man of great appetites. His security staff was the best at what they do, but they were also all impossibly beautiful, with a certain moral flexibility when it came to sexual matters.

He flicked on his Bluetooth. “Call Chapman.”

Myles Chapman, his second in command, answered on the second ring. _“You need the new guy?”_

Eliot grimaced, glancing sidelong at Damien. Chapman was competent, but he had a sarcastic streak that was eventually going to force his ouster. “Send him to the sparring room. I’ll be there in ten.”

“You got it.”  
**************************************  
A chill shivered across Quinn’s flesh as he entered the room Chapman had directed him to. “You must be something special,” Damien Moreau’s number two man said before sending him on his way. “Boss man usually gives the new guy at least a week before you audition.”

It would be more than an audition of his fighting skills. Eliot Spencer knew everything there was to know about him – otherwise he would never have been allowed to set foot inside these walls. No, it was everything about him that Spencer would not have been able to discover with even the most thorough of background checks that was at issue now.

After a moment’s consideration, he toed off his shoes, stripped off his shirt, and moved to the center of the mat to begin his usual warm-up routine. He was halfway through his second set of moves when he heard someone behind him say, “Angling pretty hard for a place in Moreau’s bed, aren’t you?”

Quinn tried to cover that he’d been taken entirely by surprise as he turned to face Eliot Spencer, but it was an imperfect save and both men knew it. “His preferences aren’t exactly a secret,” Quinn said finally, deciding not to challenge Spencer’s assessment of his motivations.

“And my men talk too much for their own good,” Eliot said, kicking off his own shoes and walking to the center of the mat.

Quinn spread his hands, adopting as submissive a pose as he dared. “If I overstepped, I’m sorry. I’m a soldier first, not a gigolo. I just heard…”

“I know what you heard,” Eliot snapped, cutting him off. “Rule number one – get used to the idea that everything even remotely connected to Moreau comes to my attention eventually.” He stripped off his own shirt and threw it casually to one side. “Rule number two – Moreau taking you into his bed earns you nothing except a lot of people speculating how quickly he’s going to get tired of you.” He squared off with Quinn, who saw and catalogued over two dozen immediate shifts in the other man’s stance and focus.

“Finally,” Eliot continue, the muscles in his arms bunching as he tensed, “you are not a soldier. You’re a mercenary, and you will never refer to yourself as a soldier in my presence again.”

Quinn didn’t waste time apologizing for the slip – if he hadn’t already been on the lookout for _something_ to happen, answering would have made him too slow to dodge the elbow Eliot was suddenly swinging directly at his face.

“Good,” Eliot said as Quinn danced a few steps backwards. “You’re still in range though – at least for me.”  
**********************************  
Quinn dodged Eliot’s sweep as well, and as they began to spar in earnest Eliot had to admit to himself that Jonah Quinn deserved his rather fearsome reputation. _Never failed to fill a contract._ It was the one thing that was repeated over and over about him, and it indicated a moral flexibility that went beyond his willingness to play sex object in his master’s bed.

 _Maybe too much flexibility,_ his hind-brain warned. Mercenaries were typically the best hires for the type of work Damien needed done, but it was much harder to guarantee their loyalty.

Ten minutes extended to twenty, with neither getting the upper hand over the other. Warning bells were starting to go off in Eliot’s head – Quinn was even better than had been reported, possibly the best Eliot had ever faced.

Then suddenly it was his own legs cut out from underneath him, his own back striking the mat hard enough to temporarily wind him. His vision flashed white, and then Quinn was on top of him – pinning him securely. “You give?”

There was a hint of a smile on his lips, and Eliot was suddenly struck by how long it had been since he was truly pinned by an opponent. Unwilling to concede victory out of hand, he spent several minutes testing the different ways he knew to break the hold Quinn had on him. For his part Quinn stayed fluid – moving with everything Eliot tried, blocking him at every turn – his only moment of vulnerability a small sound that could have been pleasure when Eliot rolled his hips and discovered that Quinn was possibly more turned on by their current circumstances than Eliot was.

“I yield,” Eliot said at last, and then Quinn was ducking in close to him – kissing him as fiercely and thoroughly as Eliot could remember ever having been kissed by anyone.

“I’d apologize,” Quinn said as soon as he let Eliot up for air, “but somehow I don’t think you’d believe me.” His pupils were blown wide, and if he was faking how wound up he was, it was one of the best jobs Eliot had ever seen.

“You’re a risk taker,” Eliot said, his heart pounding too quickly in his chest. Quinn still had him secured, and it was simultaneously the most exhilarating and terrifying thing he’d experienced in far too long. “Like pushing boundaries.”

“Hard to know where you stand if you don’t test how strong the boundaries are,” Quinn retorted. Something in his expression shifted then, and his shoulders slumped. “And I’m pretty sure now that I just crossed a big one.” Rocking backwards, he pushed to his feet in one smooth move and backed off to allow Eliot to do the same.

“Sorry,” he said, when Eliot was standing as well, and as far as Eliot could tell he meant it.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said dismissively. “It was…educational.”

Quinn followed him over to the bench, keeping a respectful distance. “Assignments are posted daily in the barracks,” Eliot said, not wanting to let Quinn continue to control the conversation. “If Damien wants you for special duty, that assignment will come directly from me. If you do not hear about it from my lips, assume whoever tries to convince you otherwise is screwing with you.” It had happened before, with men who threatened the internal order among the rank and file. Eliot discouraged it as much as he dared, but there was something to be said for the evolutionary weeding out of people likely to trust orders coming from unusual directions.

“Anything else?” Quinn asked. He finished toweling off, then drew his shirt on. Eliot would never have admitted it out loud, but he was disappointed to see the expanse of skin and muscle suddenly vanish from view.

“That’s it,” was all he said.

Thoughts of Quinn and the puzzle he represented plagued him through the rest of the afternoon. If Damien was a man of large appetites, he was also a jealous master – and the fact that Eliot was now very definitely attracted to Jonah Quinn in his own right could become a problem for all concerned.

“I want to do some more research on him,” he reported when he met up with Damien for drinks that evening in Moreau’s study. “Professionally, he’s everything you could want – talented, sophisticated, and is going to look damn good once Ernesto gets hold of him.”

Moreau took a sip of his cognac. “Personally?”

Memory of Quinn’s weight pinning him to the mat, the unexpected flash of fear as he realized he was trapped – all of that flashed through his mind in a burst of feelings. Damien noticed, because Damien noticed everything about him. “That’s interesting,” Moreau murmured, one eyebrow raising inquisitively. “I haven’t seen that reaction on you before. Is it the mercenary thing?”

“Possibly,” Eliot admitted, his brain scrambling to come up with a reason to delay bringing Quinn into their arrangement. “I really can’t put words to it. Give me a few days to look more deeply into the situation, and I’ll let you know.”  
*******************************  
The first few days after his sparring session with Eliot, Quinn was grateful his days were kept full. He had several sessions scheduled with Moreau’s private tailor – Damien’s security were to be a reflection of his wealth and power at all times, which meant perfectly fitted suits in the eight to ten thousand dollar price range.

Sparring sessions were scheduled in advance around regular duty assignments. Eliot believed in pitting his men against each other in order to share experience levels around. Weapons training wasn’t required, but it was encouraged during down-time, and Quinn took full advantage of the opportunities when they arose.

When days stretched into one week, then two, without him seeing Eliot privately at all, Quinn began to worry that despite Spencer’s assurances he _had_ overplayed his hand that day. The contract he’d accepted didn’t have a hard and fast deadline, but he wasn’t some rookie on his first assignment. There was a meeting of the world’s greatest arms dealers scheduled in Paris at the end of the month. Damien had to be dead by Quinn’s hand before leaving for that summit, which meant that if his luck didn’t turn soon he was going to have to Plan B this job.

Quinn hated the entire concept of a backup plan like he hated few things in his life, but when Eliot left the villa unexpectedly one morning on “business”, he reluctantly began sketching one out in his mind. It took him a few days to settle on a likely target, but once he decided on who was most likely to bend to his will it was only the matter of another day before he convinced the man to trade shifts and assignments with him.

Damien took cognac in his study every night after dinner. When Eliot was in residence, he joined him. It was the duty of whoever was charged with guarding the study during dinner to escort household staff in and watch while they refreshed the bottle and laid out whatever other things Moreau had ordered for the evening. It would be the matter of a few seconds to slip poison into the decanter – then once he was certain Moreau had drunk he would abandon his post and vanish into the wind.

No one ever planned for an attack on Moreau from within his security staff, simply because Eliot Spencer would not allow it.

 _Eliot Spencer isn’t here now, though, is he?_ Quinn thought as he took a short-cut through an abandoned wing of the villa in order to reach his post.

It was the matter of a dozen steps before Quinn learned how wrong he was, and how far he really had overstepped his boundaries. He never saw the compact figure hiding in the shadows as he passed – he only felt something grab his wrist a heartbeat before he was spun face first into the nearest corridor wall and something thin and sharp pressed dangerously deep into the hollow at the base of his skull.

“If you say anything in the next two minutes that isn’t a direct answer to a direct question, I’m going to lean forward and shove this blade into your brain.”

 _Eliot._ And by the sounds of things he was deeply and truly angry. Quinn blew out a shaky breath and forced himself to relax.

“Your contract has been bought out.” There was a scrape of canvas over tile, and a duffle bag was pushed into Quinn’s foot. “What you feel there is your fee for the work Sorsha hired you to do. You’re going to take it and you’re going to go.”

Quinn made a small sound low in his throat. Eliot wasn’t the first to try and buy out a contract, but it was never as easy as they thought. Elian Sorsha couldn’t afford to let people think his agreements could be voided by the application of enough cash any more than Quinn could.

Almost as if he’d read Quinn’s thoughts, Eliot said, “Before you give me any bullshit argument about your honor, understand this: Elian Sorsha is dead. _That_ is how we deal with merc contracts around here.” He stepped back then, releasing Quinn’s arm and withdrawing the knife. Hoping he was reading the invitation correctly, Quinn turned slowly – hands raised and open in clear surrender.

Face to face, even in the dim light, Quinn could see something strange lurking behind Eliot’s eyes. “You also have fifty thousand of my own money on the condition that you leave tonight and never come near us again.”

Quinn blinked. The money from Sorsha was five million cash that he was collecting without having earned it. For Eliot to throw any of his own money into the pot didn’t make sense, unless…

“You’re good,” Eliot said. More of the brittle, angry mask was flaking away – leaving a vulnerability Quinn had never expected to see in Damien Moreau’s chief enforcer. “Maybe the best I’ve ever come up against. The smart move is for me to kill you right here, right now.”

“Come with me.” The words were out before Quinn had fully committed to speaking them. Pure instinct, based on feelings he wasn’t a hundred percent certain Eliot reciprocated.

“I am the Lord thy God,” Eliot said. “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”

Fully aware that he might be signing his own death warrant, Quinn rolled his eyes. “That’s crap and you know it. Damien Moreau doesn’t own you or your soul!” He paused. “I didn’t imagine what happened when we were sparring, did I?”

Eliot’s expression was inscrutable. “Come near me or mine again after tonight, and I will kill you.”

He needed to leave; Quinn knew that. This was Eliot Spencer he was facing off with – he needed to take the win and get as far away from this place and these people as he could. “Answer the question, Eliot.” _Well, you never were known for your common sense._

“There is no answer,” Eliot countered. “None that matters. You have everything I can give you in this lifetime– don’t make me regret it.”


End file.
